Loyola Academy Jesuit College Preparatory School
The Loyola Academy Prep Wednesday, September 28, 2016 A.M.D.G.
www.goramblers.org
Volume J Issue I
New School Year Brings New Initiatives Kylie Fronczak Senior Writer With the beginning of the fall semester, there are a lot of new changes that go along with starting the school year. Freshmen are figuring out what it means to be a high schooler, everyone has new classes, teachers are learning the names and faces of a whole different set of students, and seniors of course are soaking up all they can of their last year at Loyola. However, along with the usual newness that accompanies the start of a new school year, there are some other specific changes to the day to day life at Loyola that affect everyone. As many returning students might have realized, plastic bottled waters are no longer being sold in the cafeteria or at any school sanctioned event. This is thanks to the campaign put into place last spring, called Love the Planet. Be the Change. Revolution H2O. The second major change this school year is the new testing schedule. The new system of testing designates two specific days over a five day cycle for each department to give students assessments. Both new initiatives are especially exciting because they were created by Loyola students and have ties to very Jesuit ideals. Revolution H2O started off as a final product for a couple of students in their service learning class, honors Environmental Science.
What’s Inside?
Though those seven original students are currently sophomores in college, three members of the class of 2016 carried on the project as they enrolled in the same class last fall. These three students worked to actually implement the initiative by starting the phasing out bottled water sales at the school and starting the selling of boxed water at Loyola sports games. This school year, the project has been fully implemented. Multiple members of this year’s senior class have taken up the leadership of the project, running the campaign to make sure that things continue to run smoothly and effectively. With the convenient placement of water-refilling stations around the school, students are encouraged to bring water bottles from home in order to stay hydrated throughout the school day. Seeing as the idea was developed through a service learning class, there is also a social justice aspect to the initiative. According to each year’s leading seniors, the initiative is both ecologically responsible and promotes human dignity. There is a significant decrease in the plastic waste, and the boxed water companies have a promise to replant two trees for each tree cut down in order to make the water’s packaging. Also, being in the Midwest provides the school with one of the largest resources for fresh water in the world. Having clean
Tegan Joins LA page 3
Billboards at the T show Loyola’s support for Revolution H2O along with it’s environmental group, S.A.V.E.
tap water is a luxury that many do not have, so the project encourages the use of this precious and limited resource, in order to avoid taking from people in locations where fresh water is not as accessible. The second new initiative this year deals with the ever present issue of students’ stress from assessments. As many Ramblers found out in late August, the school administration has been working with the class of 2017 Student Council to create the new testing system in order to embody the Jesuit idea of cura personalis or care for the whole person. As the student planner denotes, each school day is given a letter, A-E, to describe which departments have the ability to give assessments on which days. For example, A days only allow assessments within
the English, Language, and Math departments, followed by B days which only allow assessments in Theology and Social Studies. This pattern allows for a maximum of two to three assessments per day, depending on the letter, and typically allows three days between department testing days. In order for the procedure to be successfully implemented, a summative assessment had to be described in the student handbook. These assessments were described as anything graded, such as test, paper, lab, or major project, which would be valued at 20 points or more. Though student council and the school administration definitely had good intentions when creating the system, there is some question as to how much student stress the new implementa-
tion is actually alleviating. Many teachers have experienced having to push back dates of tests or quizzes to adhere to the system, thus requiring their classes to learn additional materials before taking an assessment, wasting time, or having to take assessments earlier than typical, with class material being crammed. The new system has obviously sparked a lot of discussion, and the responses have been mixed. Ana Divito, a senior, stated that her stress has not improved much this year. “The system has not decreased the amount of pop-quizzes, and I still have days with three tests or quizzes a day, which isn’t much improvement from before.” Senior Trey Starshak explained that he wished that the schedule hadn’t
Obama in Asia page 7
New Music Videos page 11
Cross Country page 13
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